As also-ran musicals go,
The Addams Family has gotten funnier but more predictable.

A new focus on troubled couples enhances the psychological realism, but at the expense of wilder
flights of fantasy, in the much-revised Broadway show.

The musical remains an also-ran mostly because of the weak Andrew Lippa score.

The singsong melodies and jokey lyrics are serviceable but rarely seem inspired.

The choreography by Sergio Trujillo works best within the jerky-spooky rhythms of the ghostly
chorus of Addams ancestors, while his too-rare moments of romanticism seem muted.

At least writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice have finally found a central conflict that
keeps the spotlight where it belongs: on tensions among Gomez, Morticia and their macabre clan —
not on their “normal” visitors.

KeLeen Snowgren looks and acts like the sensuous/sinister Morticia; in the Gomez role, Jesse
Sharp comes across as a fallible husband and loving father waxing nostalgic about his Latin-lover
past.